OVERVIEW

Yachting is a discipline that has seen continuous technological, social and economic evolution for over 3 centuries. The full knowledge of its history and evolution is an indispensable key to understanding the current state of the art of design as well as being able to intuit its future evolution.
The program will be divided into two large chapters, the sailing one and the motor one, each in turn divided into the various types of boats, each chapter therefore presented with a purely chronological method. All this material will be essential for the student to have a complete historical memory of the evolution of yachting, useful for being able to make their own styles, proportions and technical knowledge of large boats of the distant and recent past, knowledge that can be reused to avoid making mistakes already experienced in the past as well as to give style and elegance to new ideas.

AIMS AND CONTENT

LEARNING OUTCOMES

The main objective of the course is to provide the student with a complete overview, both from a stylistic and technical point of view, of the entire evolution of yachting, starting from the early 1700s and ending with the year 2000. As a corollary to the stylistic and technical implications, socio-economic elements will also be provided in order to better frame the reason for certain choices and therefore be able to read everything in a more complete historical context. All this in order to permeate the students with design elements that are universally considered to be of great appreciation and success, so that such elements and knowledge can in turn “contaminate” their new works and projects.

AIMS AND LEARNING OUTCOMES

The centuries-old history of yachting represents the latest evolution of the thousand-year history of nautical and naval construction; therefore, even referring to a few centuries ago, one cannot speak of archaic technological solutions but rather of technological solutions that have millennia of constant evolution behind them, making these boats sometimes directly comparable in many factors with other much more recent ones. It is essential for the student to learn what are the inputs that have guided and governed the evolution in the last 300 years, therefore within the course, over 300 cards of boats that have been milestones of evolution or clear witnesses of an era will be presented chronologically, framing each boat in a multidisciplinary framework and giving students a correct technical and descriptive reading key.

PREREQUISITES

No prerequisites are required, as the course addresses issues related to the discipline starting from the basic notions.

TEACHING METHODS

The teaching is divided into 15 lessons of 4 hours each for a total of 60 hours. As a basis, the handout prepared by the teacher will be followed, which consists of 400 pages where over 300 cards of the same number of boats will be depicted, as well as introductory chapters for each typology and historical period. The lessons will be highly discursive with the constant request for interaction by the students and continuous interdisciplinary digressions as a corollary to the central theme.

SYLLABUS/CONTENT

The teaching is based on lectures divided into various chapters. The first chapter is purely introductory, where the tools will be provided to understand and describe the architecture of boats of the past, providing new technical terms in relation to the structure, architecture and components.
The second chapter sees the discussion of the evolution of sailing boats, starting with the first examples of Dutch yachts from the second half of the 17th century, then moving on to the first modern projects treated in architectura navalis mercatoria" from the second half of the 18th century, and then the English and American yachts of the first half of the 19th century, those of the America's Cup with the eternal challenge between English ideas against American ideas, the introduction of new revolutionary forms with the end of the 19th century, the evolutionary peak culminating with the beginning of the 20th century, the metric and universal classes as well as the Scandinavian ones. We will arrive at the introduction and diffusion of offshore regattas with the CCA and RORC formulas, and then pass through the stop imposed by the war events of the Second World War world, through the rebirth of offshore racing with the introduction of light displacement and the introduction of fiberglass and the concept of the series boat. Thus we will arrive at the 70s with the IOR and the golden age of sailing and then end with the great diffusion of sailing and construction in the 80s and 90s. The course will end with the revolution brought to the world of sailing by modern composite materials and the new concept of easy sailing.
As for the section dedicated to mechanically propelled boats, it will be divided into various chapters: steam yachts and megayachts, cruisers, runabouts and racers, fishermen. The section will be introduced by the archetypes of each category, and then each category will be discerned chronologically through the boats that have marked history. We will talk about the large 19th century steam yachts, the introduction of the internal combustion engine and the diesel engine, the large pre-war yachts, the first post-war megayachts and end with the famous megayachts that from the 70s onwards have redefined the concept of yacht itself until the 2000s. For the cruiser category, we will deal with the first cruisers with steam engines, passing through the first thermal engines that gradually evolved in power and accompanied the constant growth in size and performance until arriving at the present day. The same path will take place for the category of smaller and sportier boats, both in the recreational and purely competitive declination, starting from the first canot automobiles of the early 1900s to end with the very fast offshore and open boats of today.

RECOMMENDED READING/BIBLIOGRAPHY

Mandatory text:
Evoluzione tecnica delle imbarcazioni da diporto, Francesco Foppiano 2021, dispensa
Additional in-depth text
Lo Yacht, Carlo Sciarrelli, Mursia 

LESSONS

Class schedule

The timetable for this course is available here: Portale EasyAcademy

EXAMS

EXAM DESCRIPTION

The exam will be oral and will require the delivery of an independently completed paper on a topic covered during the course. The student will have to demonstrate that he/she has correctly understood and elaborated the various teachings and notions provided, as well as demonstrate that he/she knows how to put them into practice by reworking them with his/her own ideas.

ASSESSMENT METHODS

The exam will consist of the creation of a thesis of at least 8 pages on a boat or a more general topic of your choice, or the basic design of a yacht in a classic style, such as "spirit of tradition". In addition, questions will be asked on a smaller number of boats considered to be of extreme historical importance, selected a priori from the handout. In conclusion, if you have opted for a historical and not design paper, you will be asked to provide an additional sketch of a type of boat requested by the teacher.
The student's evaluation is carried out during the oral exam and is based on the ability to describe independently, with coherence and proper use of terms, the topics and cards presented in class
The attribution of the grade will take into account:
Knowledge of the topics covered
Understanding of the related technical reasons
Ability to present
Ability to solve problems
Ability to complete and describe the requested paper

FURTHER INFORMATION

Students with disabilities or DSA can request compensatory/dispensatory measures for the exam.